Sopa blackout and day of action - as it happened

Visitors to Wikipedia's English site have been met with a blacked out page in protest against proposed US laws to stop online piracy. Photograph: Alex Milan Tracy / Demotix/Alex Milan Tracy/Demotix

5.04pm: We are going to wrap this up for the day, and what a day it has been.

After the biggest ever day of online protest politicians have been deluged with opposition to SOPA and PIPA and a lot of people who didn't know the legislation even existed do know. Not all of them are happy, according to their comments on Twitter. With Wikipedia largely unavailable for the day, it looks like there will be a lot of people handing in homework late.

The coordinated protest by Google, Reddit, Wired and thousands of other websites large and small seems to have paid off. This has proved a black day of the bills' supporters with some major defections from both sides of the political spectrum. Marco Rubio, the senator tipped as a potential vice presidential pick, has come down against the bills and other senior Republicans including Arkansas senator John Boozman, have joined him.

Open internet has always been vital to our goal of empowering individuals and communities through free access to global knowledge. While we recognize that copyright holders have legitimate concerns regarding their property rights, we do not believe that the solution should come on the backs of millions of innocent online users. Open Internet, like free speech, must always be protected.

It ain't over yet. PIPA is still up for a vote on January 24 and similar legislation is being pushed through in other countries. We will be keeping you informed as this story develops.

My source in DC: "We just got word the whole House system is down... the campaign is working." #wikipediablackout Melt the phones!

3.41pm:Ryan Devereaux, our man on in midtown Manhattan, reports back from the protests against PIPA's New York supporters:

Roughly 300 protesters assembled in front of the offices of New York senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer this afternoon to denounce the legislators' co-sponsorship of PIPA. Gathered inside a barricade pen, the demonstrators heard from an array of speakers, including a number of prominent figures in the tech industry.

New York Tech Meet Up Chairman, Andrew Rasiej, coordinated the demonstration and introduced each speaker. Rasiej claimed the protest was essential to maintaining the vitality of New York City vibrant tech sector.

"This is about the future of New York, jobs for New York and the future of the open web," he said.

"What we're seeing here is a classic example of our 20th century politics clashing with the realities of a 21st century connected humanity and a global economy," Rasiej added.

Rasiej, and the string of speakers he introduced, called on senators Schumer and Gillibrand to pull their support for the controversial legislation. Many pointed out that the tech industry in New York city employs tens of thousands of individuals; including women and young people, who are often excluded from other industries. On top of that, the speakers added, the industry continues to grow.

Andrew McLaughlin, executive vice president of Tumblr, said a free and open internet empowers disenfranchised movements and people to have their voices heard.

As the speakers wrapped up, a pair of young men familiar to those who've covered New York City's ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests took to the podium. Using the familiar "people's mic" the two called for "nerd out" march to Time Square several blocks away. Approximately 200 protesters made their way to the iconic stretch of Manhattan amid chants of "We want innovation, not stupid legislation," and "What is it we wanna get? Freedom of the internet!"

Upon arrival to the square the protesters, including one young woman holding a sign that read "Give me lolcatz or give me death," continued to denounce both SOPA and PIPA as a small contingent of passers-by and police looked on.

3.24pm: Interesting point from Gene Koo, executive director at Civics Inc, a non-profit organization founded by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, via our own Amanda Michel.

The list of supporters/opponents looks like most bipartisan thing I've seen in Congress for some time. Why is that?

As we reported earlier Florida senator Marco Rubio, a man tipped for the top of his party, has come out against SOPA/PIPA. Here in New York our Ryan Devereaux has been attending a rally against Charles Schumer, one of the bills' Democrat supporters. At the weekend Obama officials made clear that they were against the legislation as it stands.

Anti-SOPA: Marco Rubio Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Divided they stand.

3.20pm: Here's a great speech that Clay Shirky gave at TED on how SOPA threatens freedom of speech.

3.00pm: I've been talking to David Pescovitz, co-editor, managing partner, of Boing Boing. He said he was delighted with how today's protest has taken off. But he remains worried about SOPA and PIPA.

This pending US legislation does nothing but support the Hollywood studios, multinational record labels, and huge global publishers who are unable or unwilling to keep up with the future. The proponents of this legislation fear the future, and the openness it promises. And so even as their old models are dying, Big Media is attempting to hold on to a false sense of hope without a care of how their actions would impact the rest of the Web. If their efforts didn't pose such a threat to Internet security, free speech, and innovation, they would just seem pathetic. But as it stands, this legislation poses a very real and dangerous risk to the infrastructure of the Internet and our online freedom.

Today, we're seeing an unprecedented mobilization across the Internet, enabled by an increasingly networked society, social media and a number of tech companies and website owners taking principled stands in support of freedom of expression and the Open Web.

I support the right of Internet companies and services to use their platforms -- much in the same way that I suppose freedom of expression online -- to educate their users about proposed legislation that would harm a free and open Internet, as we understand that term today. Given that SOPA and PIPA have received very little coverage on the broadcast television networks whose parent companies support them, these actions are quite important, in terms of alerting citizens to what's happening in Washington. I believe that the "how" of these blackout is, in other words, an important consideration, along with the whether, why and when.

In doing so, we hope that we both spread awareness of what's at stake, educate our community and give citizens the ability to learn more and take action. I was heartened to see that the Online News Association and the American Society of Newspaper Editors have come out against these bills. (If you'd like to read my feature on these bills, you can view a cached version here:

The 'blackout' by Wikipedia, Reddit or Boing Boing, along with many other blogs and Craigslist's prominent interstitial, are leading to greater awareness of both the content and ramifications of these bills. From what I'm seeing and hearing here in DC, they're also leading to greater civic engagement between citizens and their representatives in Congress, I believe that would be a net benefit for both the communities of those services and the United States as a whole.

The internet is the most powerful tool we have for creating a more open and connected world. We can't let poorly thought out laws get in the way of the internet's development. Facebook opposes SOPA and PIPA, and we will continue to oppose any laws that will hurt the internet.

The world today needs political leaders who are pro-internet. We have been working with many of these folks for months on better alternatives to these current proposals. I encourage you to learn more about these issues and tell your congressmen that you want them to be pro-internet.

So far 128,689 people have liked his post. No wonder politicians are backing away from this legislation.

1.33pm: Back to Ryan Devereaux at the Sopa protest in New York. He's been listening to speakers including Tumblr's executive vice president, Andrew McLaughlin, who's been arguing that the bill threatens free speech movements from around the world.

1.28pm: Scott Edwards of Amnesty International has weighed in on the dangers of Sopa. He arguest that the universal declaration of human rights can be interpreted as guaranteeing people the right to intellectual property. Article 27 states:

Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

He goes on:

If we try and put aside the cynical read of the genesis of Sopa (there are very significant commercial interests in controlling digital content), efforts to protect IP rights are in keeping with UDHR Art 27, all things equal. Indeed, a government that made no effort to address widespread IP infringements would be failing in its human rights obligations on that dimension.

But the problem with Sopa and a similar bill in the Senate – Pipa –isn't that it is an effort to combat online piracy. The problem is that the effort as pursued endangers a broad range of human rights enjoyment by making it harder to share and access information and speech.

It would create a powerful and unprecedented market incentive to censor user generated content. And their passage would signal very clearly to countries around the world that it is OK to sacrifice some rights in the name of some other good.

1.16pm:Ryan Devereaux reports there are at least 100 protesters against Sopa at the protest outside the offices of two New York senators, including Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. You can follow his live tweets here.

Many prominent websites, including Wikipedia, Google, Reddit, Facebook and BoingBoing, have joined a day of protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act. Some blacked out their homepages, others made their entire content unavailable. Google urged users to lobby Congress before a planned Senate vote on January 24, saying Sopa "would censor the web and impose harmful regulations on American business".

The protest appears to be having an effect: political support for the Sopa appears to be waning. A prominent Republican, Florida senator Marco Rubio, came out against the proposed legislation, saying it was an "unreasonable expansion of the federal government" that would have "unintended consquences". Other Republicans pulled their support.

Demonstrators have gathered outside the offices of New York senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. The senators are supporters of the legislation, which now appears to be under attack from all sides.

12.22pm: We've dispatched reproter Ryan Devereaux to the offices of New York senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, where a protest is expected to begin soon. We'll have more from him when he arrives on the scene.

12.08pm: You can count on the Wall Street Journal to be on the wrong side of popular opinion. Well, you could, if you could find the page.

The WSJ posted a pro-#SOPA (pro-censorship) editorial. But I can't read it, because it's behind a paywall. Guess it won't change my mind.

12.07pm: Missing Wikipedia yet? McSweeney's, the whimisical publishing house set up by Dave Eggers, has written to the rescue (pun intended). It has replaced its homepage with a protest page, listing ten facts to help you through the blackout.

It starts well: "A triangle is a geometric figure that has three sides." I think we can all agree on that.

But I'm afraid it ends on a far darker note: "You know that girl you really like? She doesn't like you nearly as much and never will, unless your interest in her suddenly vanishes, in which case she may well start to like you. This may seem like a paradox, and it is, assuming that a paradox is a medieval weapon of torture."

11.39am: It looks like the protest is paying off. Support for the bill received a major blow over the weekend when Obama officials came out against it. But now it's the Republicans who are lining up to burst the Sopa bubble, with Florida senator Marco Rubio coming come out against the legislation.

Rubio is a rising star in the Republican party and seen as one of the leading candidates for the vice presidential ticket this year. He has this to say on Facebook:

Earlier this year, this bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously and without controversy. Since then, we've heard legitimate concerns about the impact the bill could have on access to the Internet and about a potentially unreasonable expansion of the federal government's power to impact the Internet. Congress should listen and avoid rushing through a bill that could have many unintended consequences.

Rubio joins at least two other defector from his partys. Politico reports that Republican representatives Ben Quayle from Arizona, and Lee Terry from Nebraska have also pulled their names from Sopa. (And yes, Quayle is one of those Quayles – son of Dan, the vice president who couldn't spell potato.)

11.33am: If only you had access to Wikipedia, then you would know that Mike Godwin, former Wikimedia lawyer and internet legal ace, invented Godwin's Law to describe the phenomenon that eventually all online arguments end in comparisons to Hitler and Nazis.

Who can resist Bruno Ganz's impeccable Hitler, shouting: "Jimmy Wales you mother****** I have a book report due on Thursday."

11.10am: Live now to our correspondent Oliver Bukeman, who has been monitoring blackout developments on the ground in New York City.

Tense scenes here outside the central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, after goateed hipsters and schoolchildren clashed early this morning over access to the library's limited number of copies of the concise edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

I witnessed one particularly uneasy standoff between a local web designer and a youngster researching an essay on dinosaurs (who pointed out, rightly it seemed to me, that the Encyclopedia Britannica probably doesn't list the entire cast list for the Big Lebowski anyway, so it wasn't going to settle the argument the web designer was having with his girlfriend).

10.59am: It's not just the US that is being impacted by the proposed anti-piracy legislation. I've been talking to Ivan Sigal, executive director at Global Voices, an international community of bloggers that stretches from Libya and Syria to China.

As he points out, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has made two major policy speeches about the importance of free speech online in the last three years. "It's time for another one," he says.

""For the US giovernment to use the same tools to protect copyright that the Chinese government uses to limit free speech is not acceptable. WE hear from Chinese writers that the Chinese government looks to legitimize it's policies by pointing to the West. This would be a gignificant victory for them."

Sigal says the legislation will force established internet firms to police themselves more vigorously and limit the freedom that users currently experience online. Secondly, he says it will stifle creativity, making it hard for new firms to start up unless they have "lawyered up," he says. "The tech community isn't just in Silicon Valley. It's in South Africa, Kenya, it's global," he says.

Sounding very lawyerly, Sigal says the legislation is a "confusion of class". He says: "If someone uses a Ford Mustang to rob a bank, you don't sue Ford."

10.47am: Wikipedia is down, and students everywhere are panicking. My colleague Brian Braiker has been monitoring the worldwide frustration via the means of Storify.

WTF WHY IS EVERYTHING BEING BLACKED OUT!!!! I HAVE A FUCKING PROJECT DUE IN 5 HOURS!!!! I NEED WIKIPEDIA!!!! FUCK FUCK FUCKKK

10.18am:Matthew Inman, creator of massively popular webcomic The Oatmeal, knows a thing or two about online piracy. Almost his entire output was being ripped off by a website at one point, leading him to post this.

But today he's behind the anti-SOPA barricades. His site is blacked out but well worth a visit if you want to see Oprah Winfrey in space, riding a jet ski, with Jesus.

Under SOPA he worries that using the mighty O's image might trigger a law suit. "Orwellian bullshit makes me sad," he writes.

Wired censored its homepage in protest at Sopa.

9.54am: Over at Wired, someone has gone mad with the censors' pen. The magazine has blacked out most of the words on its site in protest at Sopa and Pipa.

Under the current wording of the measures, the Attorney General would have the power to order ISPs [internet service prividers] to block access to foreign-based sites suspected of trafficking in pirated and counterfeit goods; order search engines to delist the sites from their indexes; ban advertising on suspected sites; and block payment services from processing transactions for accused sites.

If the same standards were applied to U.S.-based sites, Wikipedia, Tumblr, WordPress, Blogger, Google and Wired could all find themselves blocked.

Such requests would need to be reviewed and approved by a judge. But accused sites would get little notice of a pending action in U.S. courts against them, and, once blacklisted, have little effective means of appeal.

Google blacks out its logo to mark the Sopa day of action.

9.44am: Across the web the blackout is being marked in different ways but the site most people are likely to see is Google's.

Google has stuck a big black block over its famous logo, probably its most minimalist doodle to date. Below the search box is a link to a Google site explaining SOPA and PIPA and letting people know how to take action.

So Obama has thrown in his lot withSilicon Valley paymasters who threaten allsoftware creators with piracy, plain thievery. -

Fighting online piracy is extremely important. We are investing a lot of time and money in that fight. Last year alone we acted on copyright takedown notices for more than 5 million webpages and invested more than $60 million in the fight against ads appearing on bad sites. And we think there is more that can be done here—like targeted and focused steps to cut off the money supply to foreign pirate sites. If you cut off the money flow, you cut the incentive to steal.

Because we think there's a good way forward that doesn't cause collateral damage to the web, we're joining Wikipedia, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, Mozilla and other Internet companies in speaking out against SOPA and PIPA. And we're asking you to sign a petition and join the millions who have already reached out to Congress through phone calls, letters and petitions asking them to rethink SOPA and PIPA.

9.30am: It's morning in America and the Great Internet Blackout has begun. The English language version of Wikipedia is offline (sort of) along with popular news sharing site Reddit.

Also taking part in the protest are the icanhasCheezburger network, home of those adorable cat photos, as well as thousands of other sites. All are protesting proposed anti-piracy legislation going through the US congress.

Later today the protest enters the real world when protesters are expected to demonstrate outside the offices of New York senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, who have supported the bills.

Over the weekend the Obama administration came out against key components of Sopa, effectively killing the bill in its current form. But its main sponsors are fighting to get it back on the table and Pipa is up for a vote in the Senate on January 24.

The tech community is keen not to paint this as a battle between Silicon Valley and Hollywood, which has poured millions into lobbying for tighter copyright laws. But this looks set to be a defining battle in the war between old and new media.

We will be live blogging events throughout the day and hearing from experts about this complex but important issue.